St. Paulus chapel St. Georgen

"It was in 1991 when I first had the idea of studying the life of the apostle Paul, and I subsequently travelled in his footsteps to experience as much of his work and actions as possible. This really appealed to me from a human point of view, as the apostle endeavoured to reach out to all people, regardless of whether they were Christians or pagans and from which countries they came. He wanted to bring the message of Jesus Christ to everyone so that all people on earth would recognise that there is only one God and that we are all children of God. This gave me the desire to build a St Paul's Chapel in our town of St Georgen, so that everyone in this hectic, stress-filled world could have a small church all to themselves where they could think about their lives in peace and quiet and present their wishes and requests to God. In my mind, I spent many sleepless nights visualising St Paul's Chapel as it stands before us today. The good Lord helped me to earn the money for this little church myself through hard work. However, as I only moved to St Georgen from Villingen when I married my husband in 1984, I didn't know many people here. So I turned to Father Gunter Storz and asked him to help me with my project, which he happily promised to do. I drew the exterior of the chapel, told Father Storz that it should be a St Paul's chapel and that it should be opposite the railway station in the corner at the edge of the forest, to which there was already a path. I had also put the financing for the chapel in his hands.

During this time, I read one morning in my Südkurier that someone wanted to build a chapel in St Georgen, whereupon I said to myself:

Aha, now that I want to build a chapel, someone else wants to too but it's better to have two than none. Again and again I enquired with Rev. Storz how things were going - but all the waiting was in vain! A year and a half had passed and nothing was happening. At my insistence, I was told that nothing could be done. In my distress, I sent a prayer to heaven that evening and asked God to help me further. That night, as it may sound, but it is a fact, I dreamt that a beautiful peacock with its feathers spread open flew past my bedroom door. My words were: 'I have never seen such a beautiful bird in St Georgen. In the first few days, I didn't assign any meaning to my dream, but only when I realised that it was probably God's will that this chapel should be in the opposite place. I remembered that I had read a year and a half earlier that there was someone else in our town who was planning to build a chapel, and when my plans with Pastor Storz had not progressed an inch in that long time, I set off to find this person without knowing his name, address or direction. As it turned out later, I was heading in the right direction. When I met a local couple on the way and asked if they were aware that someone wanted to build a chapel in St. Georgen, they promptly replied: "A chapel here in St. Georgen? Never! You may have read that it was Schonach or Triberg, but never in St Georgen. I thanked them, but was not deterred and continued in the same direction. When I arrived at the farm near the forest, I asked the same question again and got this answer: "Yes, that one!" The person I asked pointed with his hand to the Baumgärtl estate. I thanked him very much and walked straight across the autumn ploughed fields and meadows to the farm. When I knocked, Mr Baumgärtl came and said: 'We don't need anything, we have everything. I replied: 'I don't want to sell you anything either, I just wanted to ask if you were planning to build a chapel, to which he replied yes. I then said: Me too! Maybe we can build a chapel together." He invited me to his house and I expressed all my wishes regarding the chapel: that it should be a St Paul's Chapel, open to all people of every religion and every nation in all generations. When we were able to agree on all the details and I transferred my funding from Pastor Storz to Franz Baumgärtl, we began to plan and build together. It was 1994 in November. Mr Baumgärtl was an excellent builder and we discussed everything together. He was very hard-working and worked cleanly and correctly, so it was a pleasure to see how the work progressed. His family members also helped out.

His friends from Bavaria, the Zeiger family, made the beautiful onion dome and the benches. The stonemason Mr Dieter Hanke made the altar. The fact that Mr Nevzat Sahin, an artist from Turkey, had moved to our town at the same time by marrying his wife, who had lived and worked here for many years, was probably also significant. We found out about this artist through Mr Baumgärtl's grandson. When our chapel was finished, only the interior painting was still missing, we got to know Mr Sahin. He was prepared to paint this St Paul's Chapel. It was not an easy task. As a Muslim, Mr Sahin had absolutely no idea about the Christian faith, so I spent many, many hours with him and his wife, who translated everything into Turkish for him. It was all about Christianity from the beginning and what he should paint and depict in ceramics.

He had to know what everything meant in order to be able to create it. It turned out that even as a young boy he had harboured the desire to paint a church, but he would never have thought that it would be a Christian church.

I also told this artist about my dream with the peacock, and so he included the peacock's tail in the relief I wanted on the Apostle Paul's missionary journeys and on the floor of the chapel. It was only a year ago that I found out from Mr Baumgärtl that when he bought this property, there were actually two peacocks on the farm and that they wanted to sell him the peacocks as well, but he was not interested. I myself have never seen a peacock in St Georgen, as I said in my dream. I was only able to recognise all the connections with the creation of St Paul's Chapel afterwards, which was God's will.

It was my wish that this chapel was completed on 29 June 1996 and that it was solemnly consecrated on "Peter and Paul" by Father Gunter Storz, with the St. Georgen church choir under the direction of Mr Josef Spath and Mr Rainer Merkle providing the musical framework. God's blessing was everything.

"Under heaven, we are all one family."

(Words of a Chinese saint)

The door of St Paul's Chapel is always open to all people on this earth, it invites us to let God tell us: You can't throw your life away like rubbish in the bin. You can't sell it like a chemist: cellulose, protein and lime for 10 DM. No, you are valuable! You are unique! You are an original! You are my partner. So my wish came true with the building of the chapel. Mr Franz Baumgärtl's wish to build a chapel was a vow of thanks to God for his wife's health. So our hearts are full of joy that God gave us his blessing.